The challenge: convincing theatergoers to head to Brooklyn for a nearly four-hour-long Tony Kushner play about privileged intellectuals in Afghanistan, complete with dialogue in five languages, including Pashto and Farsi.
The solution: casting Maggie Gyllenhaal, the current hipster queen of indie cinema, as one of the leads.
On Tuesday, Gyllenhaal makes her New York stage debut as Priscilla in Kushner’s “Homebody/Kabul,” which opens at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
It seems like an odd role for an actress best known for her work in 2002’s cult hit film “Secretary” – about a young girl who embarks on an S&M affair with her boss – and audiences in L.A. last fall had a “funny” reaction to the show too, she says.
“There’s almost no theater in L.A., so I think it was a lot for them to take,” she says. “I think people were just stunned when they came out of the play. I just don’t think they were used to having to work that way. It requires audience participation.”
Kushner’s play first opened in new York just weeks after Sept. 11 – a highly charged time to debut a piece (albeit long-completed) about a British homemaker who abandons her husband and grown daughter, Priscilla (Gyllenhaal) to explore Afghanistan.
She disappears, and her family travels to Kabul hoping she hasn’t been murdered by the Taliban.
Gyllenhaal seems to gravitate toward projects with political overtones:in the recent HBO movie “Strip Search,” she played an American abroad suspected of working with terrorists. And even “Secretary,” she says, was “political in terms of gender and sex and power.”
But there’s also a little bit of glam movie-star lurking underneath her cool, indie exterior.
Gyllenhaal – the Columbia grad who lives in the West Village and dates actor Peter Sarsgaard – starred with Julia Roberts, Kirsten Dunst and Julia Stiles in last winter’s pseudo-feminist chick flick “Mona Lisa Smile” – “but I was just one of a bunch of girls in that movie.”
She says she badly wanted the splashy role in “Secretary,” but had to wait on the sidelines while the producers kept offering the part to bigger actresses.
“They kept saying, ‘We’ve got to see if we can get a name,'” she says, and when she finally won the part, “we used to joke throughout the whole [shoot] that the director was going to replace me with Reese Witherspoon.”
When it opened at the Angelika, Gyllenhaal hiked over to see if anyone would show up for the 5 p.m. screening.
“When I got to Houston I almost turned around and went home because I just didn’t want to feel bad,” she says. “But there were so many people! I couldn’t believe it.”
Now she’s in the lofty position of having replaced Jennifer Garner in “Happy Endings,” a new comedy written and directed by Don Roos (“The Opposite of Sex”).
“I’ll go to Maggie first the next time,” says Roos, who cast her as an aimless karaoke singer who hooks up with a young man (Jason Ritter), then ditches him for his father (played by Tom Arnold).
Even Gyllenhaal was shocked that she snagged the role, given that she and the wholesome Garner seem like polar opposites: “I can’t – to be honest, I can’t imagine her playing that part,” she says. “I’m sure she would have done it very differently.”
Roos loved Gyllenhaal so much the granted her a very specific request: “She said that she always wanted to play the girl in sunglasses and a bikini lounging by the pool,” he says, “so she got it.”
Gyllenhaal will also be seen in three more soon-to-be-released films: “Criminal,” adapted from the Argentine hit “Nine Queens”; “In God’s Hands,” by the writer-director of the cult hit “Clean, Shaven”, and “The Great New Wonderful,” in which she plays a cake decorator at culinary war with Edie Falco.
She admits she wouldn’t mind being in a big summer blockbuster like her brother Jake, who’s in the upcoming global-warming film, “The Day After Tomorrow.” (“You get money!” she says.)
But she’ll happily keep looking for the scripts that really resonate with her.
“I watched ‘Coal Miner’s Daughter’ the other night on TV, and I was e-mailing my friend,” she says, punching an imaginary Blackberry.
“Sissy Spacek is so amazing in that movie. And I said, ‘They don’t make ’em like they used to!’
QUEEN OF THE INDIES
Think of her as the Zelig of indie actors – since she began acting, Maggie Gyllenhaal has popped up in nearly every major indie movie of the past four years:
“Cecil B. Demented” (2000)
Played Raven, a Satanic make-up artist involved with a rogue group of filmmakers who kidnap an A-list actress. Directed by John Waters.
“Donnie Darko” (2001)
Starred opposite brother Jake as the sister of a boy tormented by a giant, imaginary evil rabbit. A cult classic that still gets midnight showings nationwide.
“Adaptation” (2002)
Spike Jonze gave her a small-yet-pivotal role as Caroline, who dates the smarmy, successful twin brother of Nicolas Cage’s neurotic, failed screenwriter.
“Confessions of a Dangerous Mind” (2002)
George Clooney cast her as one of game show host Chuck Barris’ conquests in his star-studded (Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon) directorial debut.
“Casa de los Babys” (2003)
Directed by indie cinema demi-god John Sayles, she played one of six American women who trek to South America to adopt babies.